What is list building?

List building is a way of capturing the email addresses of people who may be interested in products or services you offer.  Usually this is done using list building software (which I discuss below) and involves offering something for free that people can download.  In order for the person to download the ebook, course, or whatever other offering you have, they sign up to your list and give you permission to email them on future occasions.  Once signed up to your list, people can easily unsubscribe by clicking a link on your email if they get tired of you.

Why build a list?

List building can be great if you have a service or product that you want to offer to people.  You have built a list of people who have signed up to hear from you so you can just type one quick announcement, click a button and everyone on your list will get a copy.  Imagine that you have a training course to offer on a how to work with children therapeutically.  Previously to designing your course you have offered a free eBook on the same topic and linked this to your list building software.  You can see straight away that the list you have built will probably be very receptive to your course offer and you may even be able to fill your course through your list, depending on how many people are on it.

You can do the same for videos you may create, books, workshops etc.  This is why people who use the internet to market their products exclaim;

“there is power in the list”.

How to build a list

Here is a quick step by step guide………

1. Write something that your potential audience would want to download.  If you blog you can easily just stick all of your blog posts into one easy to read PDF and offer that as a download.
2. Convert your writing into an eBook.  This makes it easy to download and easy to read.  eBooks are usually in PDF format and can have a pretty front cover to really pull the punters in.
3. Upload your offering to your website.  In a WordPress site you will use the media section of the dashboard.
4. Attach your offering to your list building software.  The two main list builders are Aweber and Mailchimp.  the difference between these two is small and both can be useful depending on what you want to do.  A quick Google of “aweber vs Mailchimp” will fill you in on this.  Briefly, if you do not see your list getting very big then Mailchimp will do it for free for up to 2000 subscribers.  If you want to go all out with the list building thing then go with Aweber – the tool most of the big boys use.
5. Design a sign up form in the software package you chose and insert it into your website for people to sign up through.  This way, people put their details into the form, have an email sent to them to verify that they want to sign up and then they receive the freebie you designed and you have them on your list.

That’s it!  simple as 1,2,3 (er, 4,5!)

Next steps

There is nothing tricky about any of this but it does take time.  My advice is to get stuck in and do it early on your site so you can capture emails from the off.  If you really can not find the time to do this then I offer a range of list building services that you can find by going to this page.  All you have to do is supply me with the information you want to use as your freebie (step 1)as a Word document,  I will do the rest (steps, 2,3,4,5) if you have a WordPress website.  If you don’t use my contact form to send me a message and we will sort something out.

Conclusion

Your list can be a great resource that you can utilize to sell products and services to people who will more than likely be very interested in what you have to offer.  Start early with it, even before you know what you have to sell, because then when you have worked it out you have an audience that is ready to hear what you have to say.

Try AWeber’s Email Marketing Tool Risk-Free

Build links to your website for free

Here’s my plan then.  I’ll use all of these websites to build links to my Manchester Psychotherapy website and let you know how painful the experience was (and probably to remind myself why I pay people to do this for me!).

Free Linkbuilding Sites

Socialadr

Socialadr is a site that allows you to bookmark other people’s content and in return they will bookmark yours.  Bookmarking is a way of highlighting your page, blog or article to others.  It gets noticed by Google and gives a link back to your site each time it is done.  Socialadr also offer a paid service if you can’t be bothered to do it yourself although that kind of goes against the point of this article!  I would recommend you use their set up service though.  for $11 they will take out the tedium of setting up all of the book marking sites.  I used their paid service to set up the basic bookmarking systems and within about 5 hours they got back to me with my accounts all set up.  I then set up the blog post I wanted bookmarking by others.  Basically, this is a “I’ll bookmark yours if you bookmark mine” site.  I bookmarked the 5 sites I was allowed to do and earned a few credits.  I will have to do this every day in order to build up enough credit to have my site bookmarked though.  Hmmm – let’s see how this one goes.

Total time taken – about 15/20 mins.

Number of links generated – er, none yet!  Though they I say I can build thousands!

247 Backlinks

247 Backlinks is a site that you can have 1000 free backlinks to your site via forum or blog posts for free.  247 backlinks was easy to set up and will reportedly drip out around 200 links per day.  I chose the 4000+ forum posts to have my links from.  I chose this because there is a 95% certainty that the links will happen (according to their site) and I have many high PR links to my site already, so a few low PR links will mix things up a bit and should benefit me.

Total time taken – approx 15 mins.

Number of links generated – 1000 over 5 days (200 per day).

Social Monkee

Social Monkee offers 25 links per day.  You can install a plugin for Firefox that enables a small graphic of a monkey in the bottom right hand corner of your browser which you can click on to book mark that site.  It takes a bit of work from that point though.  Social Monkee requires spinning syntax to be used.  If you have never spun anything before then here’s a simple explanation.  Spinning allows more than one version of text to be displayed each time your article is published.  Quite simply, you have to type alternative words that the software can pick to give you different text each time the bookmark is used.  For example, this sentence might look like this if spun…..{for example|e.g|as an example, this sentence|this information might look|appear like this if|when spun}.

It takes some getting used to spinning text and there are plenty of programs out there that will do it for you, the best of which is probably the best spinner (appropriately named).  If you are only going to use it for this sort of thing though, it’s not worth purchasing.  Just do it manually.

Total time taken – 30 mins

Number of links generated – 25 per day.

IMT Website Submitter

IMT website submitter is a simple one.  You just bung your URL and keyword into the spaces provided and click the magic button.  The site creates over 2500 pages with your information on and then pings these sites to encourage the Googlebots to trawl them.  The downside of the site is that you have to wait for the site to create the pages which can take some time.  I just left the page open to get on with it whilst going to the next site on this list

Total time taken -bloody ages, but it won’t bother you, just let it get on with it and move to the next free links site.

Number of links – 2500ish

Free Traffic System

Free Traffic System.  This site allows you to submit your articles to an article directory for free.  You still have to write the articles you are publishing and for that reason I did not try this one out.  They say you can have your article submitted to 30 directories for free which is a potential 30 more links.  Links means movement up google so the more the merrier.

Total time taken – This one will take a while for you to write the article and submit to the site.  I’d estimate at least 2 hours from my experience of doing this.

Number of links – 30 per article.  Potentially more if others want your article on their website.

Are you ready to invest your time?

So there they are, five websites that give you the ability to build links to your site for free.  If you did them all you would spend around three hours generating about 3000-4000 links.  Not bad at all.  Do remember though, it’s not just the amount of links that count, it’s the quality of links.  With the paid links system that I offer you will be getting high Page Rank links that Google really takes notice of.  High PR links shoot you up the rankings.  Also consider the time this is going to take you.  If your hourly rate is around £40 an hour then this process will cost you £120 worth of time and you will have to go to several of these sites daily to get the most out of them.

If you are passionate about DIY link building these sites offer you links for sure, so get stuck in and please come back and comment on this post about how you found it building links to your site for free.

This opens the world up completely for therapists. We can communicate with a global audience and get our message across whilst sat in our front rooms (like I am doing now with you!)

My intention over the next few weeks is to explore the possibilities of the electronic age for therapists and counsellors. Where can it take us? What is the best way to ride this monster without getting bitten or stomped under foot?

Along for the ride is my friend and colleague Mark Stipanovsky. Mark has used the internet successfully to promote his business and is king of LinkedIn, running pretty much all of the TA based groups that exist (apart from the European based one which slipped out of his grasp!)

Your website

We are going to start at the beginning. Your cornerstone. The most important asset you have on the web, your website. Had a look at your website lately? You do have a website don’t you?!

If a potential client wants to find a therapist then the chances are very high they will go to Google and type in “therapist in (city name)” and see what comes up. That client will then look on page one of Google and click onto the first three or four websites they see. Here’s some statistics for you from the Search Engine Optimization guys at Articlesontap.com. The person who is number 1 on Google will get 56% of all business for the keyword. The next two or three businesses will pick up the rest of the business. Most people won’t bother to read past page one. Most people won’t bother to click on the second website if they like what they see on the first.

What’s this tell us? Firstly, that it’s important to optimize your website so it crawls up the Google rankings – that’s a whole article in itself. Secondly, your website has to communicate its message instantly.

10 seconds and counting!

When your prospective client clicks on your site you have about 10 seconds to convince them that it’s worth spending time on. Within that time they have decided either to investigate further or to click off and go to the next site on Google.

A client of mine once talked to me about therapist’s websites from her perspective. I say talk but it was more of a rant! Her message was clear. Many therapist websites are truly awful! Sorry to say it but sometimes we need a bit of tough love to help us grow!! This client’s complaint was that the sites she saw were dull, unimaginative and gave her no information that she could understand. A typical sentence looks something like “I have a Diploma in Counselling and am a CTA. I am registered with the UKCP and bound by the ITA and ITAA code of conduct”. Eh? What does this mean? How does this help me sort out my feelings of depression? Here’s another one (not taken off anyone’s real site I hasten to add, but easily could have been) “I use Transactional Analysis as my main modality though also have experience of person centered counselling and am trained in CBT”. Exsqueese me? Transactional Analysis? Are you an accountant or a therapist? CBT? Isn’t that something to do with motorbikes?

I’m sure by now you get my drift. From the second that prospective client clicks onto your site you have 10 seconds to CONNECT. That’s what us therapists are trained to do isn’t it? You are not writing to impress your therapy mates with how many courses or qualifications you’ve got – CLIENTS DON’T CARE, they just want someone they connect with to help them with their depression, anxiety, or other hurdle.

Now your turn

So here’s your first task. Get yourself over to your website and rewrite the copy you have on there. Go with Eric’s principles and if an eight year old can’t understand it, delete it. When you feel tempted to launch into therapy speak give yourself a slap and realise that doing that is the best way to get prospective clients to click off your site.

Haven’t got a website? Make one. It’s easy and I have a complete guide to doing it completely free on my website build site soulhealerwebsites.com If you get stuck just email me and I’ll give you a hand. I have a good friend who has used the guide and her site is now number one on Google for the term “Stockport Psychotherapy”.

I also encourage you to discuss what I have said here by getting involved with my new project http://therapiser.com. My plan is to have therapists and counsellors from all modalities come share their ideas and learn from each other here – if you want to write a post on anything therapy based that I can put on the site, even better!

Over to Mark for his input…….

I love the way you put it across Ian, I am also sitting in my front room and am able to talk therapy with people from all over the globe (clients and fellow therapists).

I now get most of my work via my website, number one on Google if you type in “Mark Hypnotherapy” (why you would want to type in Mark Hypnotherapy is another matter so I won’t go into that here as again that is another article – yet to be written).

Using the internet effectively

One of my aims when I first began training was to become one of the top clinical hypnotherapists in the world and I am on my way to doing that. I have access in person and electronically to fellow therapists who are at the top of their respective professions and this is mainly due to the internet and attending conferences. I love it!

I decided to talk TA on LinkedIn and helped set up some groups that are specifically TA and every week we get new members. The feedback I get from fellow trainees is that a lot of them are reading the discussions and want to join in but are unsure of how to participate or feel less than qualified – as Nike says – Just Do It – or even better as one of my learned colleagues says – Just Fxxxng Do It, (very unlike me to swear as anyone who has had the pleasure of meeting me in reality rather than cyberspace will testify…). As for the more qualified amongst us, it is wonderful to be able to talk TA with people I had previously only read their articles or books so a big thanks to all you published authors and writers who are currently participating in spreading the knowledge that is so lovingly called TA (you know who you are).

My website

As for websites, people either love mine or wonder “what happened there?” A bit like meeting me I suppose! (If you meet me you will definitely remember me!) People create or pay others to create websites for very different reasons so decide what you want your website to do for you and your business (yes, therapy is a business), and like any other business nurture and grow it.

I use my website as a tool to direct potential clients to and also to do a bit of psycho-education with people who are interested in learning more about therapy. I update it every month or so and change the wording slightly depending on my latest learning or readings.

The Internet is here to stay and your website is an integral part of your marketing strategy. Prices to have one built for you range from free to thousands of pounds, dollars or Euros so set a budget and make sure you include marketing. It’s no good having the best website in the world if only you know about it! You can also have more than one website. Sometimes it is more cost effective to be on someone else’s and also more effective full stop. This brings me full circle to Ian’s latest project http://therapiser.com. Collectively we become stronger and more effective – As One. Have a look and get involved.

Check out Mark’s website at www.markthehypnotherapist.com

Image: renjith krishnan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I am therapist working in Manchester, UK. I have been running this business since 2008 and have used a whole range of marketing strategies to promote my business. I have tried local advertising, leaflets and websites on the internet. Blogging has made the biggest difference to the amount of clients I have.

Why does blogging help?

There are a number of reasons why blogging works so well. Here are some of them:

• Before blogging people would find my website and very often click through to the next site. Now, people click on my website and hang around for a while. They read a few articles and start to form a relationship with me there and then. Many therapist websites are cold places lacking in much depth. The traditional model is to state the type of therapy that is delivered and a few facts about the qualifications the therapist has. There’s a problem with this though. The potential client cannot really get a feel for who you are and what your opinions are on anything. Qualifications probably mean very little to them. What your potential client is looking for is someone they can work with and feel safe with. This applies whether you are a therapist or a motor mechanic. Trust is key.
• Blogging allows you to show off your expertise in an area. If you are a great interior designer and blog about it, potential clients can quickly see you know your stuff and are more likely to hire you. This has happened to me, especially in the area of couple’s therapy. I blog about it with passion because it’s an area I love to work in. The result is people want to work with me because I show that passion.
• Blogging improves your website ranking with Google. Google loves fresh content. When you write a weekly (or more frequent) blog post you keep your site up to date and Google starts moving your site up the rankings as a result. Your post may even zoom to the top of the rankings for its keyword simply because it is so new.
• Blogging increases your knowledge base on your subject. As you read around to gather ideas for blogging you accumulate knowledge which makes you better at whatever your specialist field is.
• Blogging increases content for your site. Good posts add authority to your site which could move you up the rankings.

If you don’t currently have a blog on your business site how should you go about getting one? Well, there are lots of free platforms out there but the one that shines brightest is WordPress. This is free blogging software that allows you to design and maintain a site easily and quickly. There are plenty of guides out there telling you how to build a site, including the one I have written called “The only guide you will ever need to build your first blog” (catchy title eh?!). If you want a free copy of my e-book just stick your details in the box on the right of this article.

Blogging took my business from struggling to oversubscribed. It can do the same for you. Go for it!

Twitter is a “microblogging” platform. When using twitter you are limited to 140 characters. This means you will be sending information in short bursts. 140 characters lends itself to a conversational style and is enough to send links to websites or your blog.

Why use twitter?

• It’s fun! Twitter is a great way to make new connections, find out about what’s going on and keep up to date with friends who are also on twitter.
• It’s a great way to drive people to your site.  When you tweet your link on twitter then everyone who follows you will see it.  Some of them may “retweet” to their followers too (se below for an explination)
• Google is increasingly taking note of how much “buzz” there is around websites and blogs to decide where to put them in the rankings.  If you have lot’s of tweets of a post or a page, expect to go up in the rankings (maybe!)

How to use twitter

1. Go to twitter and sign up for an account.
2. Fill in your bio section carefully. This is what people will read and decide whether you are someone that they would enjoy following and interacting with.
3. Go to the “search” box and type in something that you are interested in. As a therapist I am interested in therapy so that goes into the search box and I will be given a list of people who have something to do with therapy. Read their bio information and decide who you want to “follow”. If you follow them it means that every time they “tweet” (send information out) it will appear in your twitter feed and you can read and respond to it.

How twitter grows

Chances are that as you follow people, some of them will check out your bio and think you might be interesting. They may well then follow you back. Now you have people who get to see your tweets.

When people tweet you can respond by pressing “reply”. This is how conversations start. The people that follow you will see your reply. This is how the network builds up. Here’s an example….

I follow my friend Sophie, she tweets and I reply. The people that follow me see my incredibly interesting reply and wonder what the conversation is about. They may then check out the whole conversation, see how fascinating it is and start to follow Sophie too. Now my followers start to reply to Sophie with their ideas. It’s a snowball thing!

What is “retweeting”?

Retweeting is where I pass on information from someone to all of my followers and is an extremely powerful way to get your information spread across the net. Here’s an example:

1. My friend Sophie is running a therapy workshop. She puts the information onto a website like http://counsellingcourse.net and presses the “tweet” button at the top.
2. This automatically sends the information to twitter and the 500 people that follow Sophie.
3. As one of those people I will see this information and the link to the great website. I will check out the course and may sign up.
4. I think the course is so good that I want the people who follow me to find out about it. I can do this in a millisecond by pressing “retweet” on Sophie’s original tweet. This now sends that information to the 220 therapists that are following me.
5. They go check out the course and some may sign up. Some may retweet the information to their followers.
6. I’m sure you get the picture, within literally minutes; you can have your course, blog post or pictures in front of thousands and thousands of people.

What is the first step?

Go right now to http://twitter.com and get signed up. There are plenty of instructions on the site helping you with this. You can then start to follow me @itomlinson and I will help you out if you get stuck. Before you know it you will find yourself in a great community that helps each other out, shares great information and has a laugh! So, now you know how to use twitter, I’ll see you over there and we can tweet together!!

Linxboss is a fully automated link building system. All you have to do is simply give the keywords and URL for the site you want to build to and Linxboss will do all the hard work for you. Linxboss will provide 200 links per domain. These links are spread over two pages and four keywords.

The great thing about Linxboss is that it is pretty much set and forget. The hard work is done by the guys running the system. This means that you do not have to provide any articles or posts and you do not have to fork out extra cash to buy these in either.

Linxboss is a slower system and very gradually builds your link profile. I have had sites that have moved to position 3 or 4 on page one of Google simply by using Linxboss all on its own.

Linxboss makes a great addition to other link building systems as it provides more diversity to your link building portfolio; exactly what you need if you are going to be taken seriously by Google.

Once more, you will see my offer for your site to be added to Linxboss is considerably cheaper than signing up to Linxboss yourself. You may want to sign up if you have five or more websites that you want to build links to. If you want to sign up or find out more about Linxboss just click this link here to be taken to the website.

When I first started my business I did not bother with SEO.  I let the company who hosted my site deal with that (after all they did say they had it all under control – which they didn’t) and I did not like the idea of paying money to have SEO done – “why bother?” I thought.  I also did not want to fork out any money for an SEO service because I believed that it would take care of itself for free.  As a result of this way of thinking my website ranked pretty high for one keyword but nowhere for a huge range of other keywords.  The result: very few calls from clients.

Then I read a post on a website somewhere that talked about how we have a different attitude to our online business to the attitude we would have with an offline business and it really hit home.  The article said that if I were to start an offline business then I would not dream of attempting to do it without investing some serious cash to get it started up – £15 000 minimum initial investment.  And yet people believe they can have success online and invest absolutely nothing!  This thinking did not make sense and it was exactly what I was doing.

I decided to learn about SEO.  I was also willing to invest financially in it too.  The change this made in my business was not immediate but it was massive.  Over a period of weeks my keywords started rising through the Google rankings and once they had reached page 1 I began to get more inquiries.  And more…and more!  Suddenly the world could see what I had to offer!

The result is now an overfull therapy practice and an income from referring clients to other therapists.

“How much is this going to cost me?”  I hear you ask.  I can do you a basic package for £40 per month, my advanced package is only £100 and this will give you a portfolio of links from a range of sources.  Put that in perspective.  That’s less than you would earn from a couple of sessions with that new client who could contact you as a result of your investment!

You can find the SEO package I offer here. If  it’s something you are interested in then please use the contact form on this website to get in touch with me and we will get cracking straight away.  It will work with any website so you can keep the site you have got.

Tomo’s insider tip!! It’s always best to buy server space in the country you see yourself doing most business in.  If you are selling in the UK, buy server space from servers that are actually in the UK.  Likewise, if you are going to mainly target a US audience, then buy server space from a US based server.  Why?  Usual reason!  Google likes it. It will search UK servers for UK based inquires and US servers for US based inquiries.  You want to take every advantage you can to get you up that Google ranking.

To run WordPress you are best off with a Linux based site that has PHP5.

My recommendation for servers are as follows:

UK based server webhosting uk .  This is the webhost that all my websites are on.  They are cheap, efficient and easy to use.  They also give great support that helped me no end when I first wanted to put my site up and had no idea how to do it (you should avoid that problem cos you got this guide to explain all).  They give online support 24 hours a day and I have found this much more efficient than the telephone service which does keep you waiting a while.

US based server hostmonster.com.  Once more, these guys offer you a great deal and are excellent value for money.  They have top notch customer service and will supply you with everything you need even with the budget package.  Installing WordPress is as easy as clicking a button – no faffing around with uploading files or any of that nonsense!

Get stuck in!

• Choose the server that best suits your market, click on the link above to take you to the website and buy the cheapest Linux package you can get.  They all fulfill the requirements you have of a server so it’s pretty impossible to go wrong.  If you get super enthusiastic at this web building malarkey then you can upgrade your account later – but that’s probably a long way down the line for you (I host 4 sites on my UK based server and have barely used a quarter of my capacity).

Domain Name Registration

Many host servers offer a free domain name when you buy server space with them.  If you want to you can do this rather buy one separately.  I personally like to have full control over my domain name so I leave it sat with domain monster and just point it at my server – easy to do and flexible for me if I want to change servers too.

Choosing a domain – There are a few things you need to think of when choosing a domain. If the possibility of selling your blog at some point in the future is there, you don’t want to use your actual name or brand in the domain name (i.e. johndoe.com) Instead, think of a good keyword phrase to target and use that in your domain name for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) purposes.

If you are out to brand your name however, you may want to think about using your name in your URL. This is all dependent on your goal with the blog. Just keep in mind, if you use your name in your domain name, it will most likely be extremely hard to sell the blog if there ever comes a time in which you decide to do so.

The option I chose was to register my domain name and simply 301 redirect it to my blog. This way I won’t lose the traffic from direct visitors of my name domain and I can still sell my blog in the future if I decide to do so. I can even market my name domain if I choose and since I’m using a 301 redirect all of that “link juice” aka authority will go to the actual blog. I’m still building my “brand” as the header image has my picture and the title includes my name. When a new visitor lands on the site, he or she immediately knows that the blog belongs to me.

Here are some other tips that you need to consider when choosing your domain name:

1.     Go for the regional address of your country if that’s your target market.  For example, if you are selling in the USA you need to be chasing a .com domain name.   If you want to sell spanners to people in the UK then you want a .co.uk address.  This is because search engines prefer regional addresses when they search, so someone searching for spanners in the UK will have the .co.uk results returned before the .com results.  If you can, avoid non-specific addresses like .net or .info because Google will not know instantly where the website is targeted for and give it less prominence in the rankings.

2.     Do your best to get the purpose of your business in your name.  So if you sell spanners in Britain you need to be aiming for “qualityspanners.co.uk” or some such.  You then have keywords that people will search for in your web address, moving you up the rankings.

3.     Avoid underscores, hyphens or any other not letters in your name.  These make it harder to type and harder for potential customers to remember.

4.     Keep the name sensible in length.  If it’s really long then people are going to forget it or type it wrongly and not find you as easily.

5.     Make it easy to remember and avoid words that are difficult to spell.  People will forget it or type it into the address bar wrong you’ve just lost a customer!  Take it from me, the owner of http://manchesterpsychotherapy.net , that this is good advice.  I had to teach myself how to spell psychotherapy, and I can see the myriad of variations of the spellings of the word that show up on my search information that lots of people haven’t got a clue either.  Manchestercounselling.com would have been a much better bet, but it had already gone

Have a think about what names you would like to have and type them into the search web address part of domain monster.  You can quickly find out whether the address is available in the format you want.  If you want .co.uk and .com is available then think of another name and get it right!  My policy is to find a name that I really like and then buy .com and .co.uk of that name.  I then redirect the .com  address to my .co.uk address so if someone makes a mistake when typing in the address in makes no difference – they still end up finding my site.

Your turn to get stuck in!

• If you want to use domain monster to buy your domain name then I would ask you to click on the link on my website to take you to it.  I’ve made this guide free so I guess I’m asking for a favour from you.  If you go to the site via my link I’ll make a small profit and you will pay the same amount.  To do this simply click on the flashing monster in this article – see, even saves you typing!

You don’t, of course, have to buy your domain name through domain monster.  I recommend them because they have excellent prices and they make it very easy to manage your domain name.  The rest of this guide will be presuming you are using domain monster, but it should be easy to do the same with whatever seller you have registered your name to.

• Think of a good name for your business that fits with the criteria mentioned above.
• Buy that name.

Tomo’s insider tip!! If you can afford it (and, let’s face it, it’s not all that expensive!) buy the name for at least 2 years.  This is because Google likes names registered for longer than a year.  It shows commitment to your site and proves you are not a spam website that will do evil things and then disappear never to be seen again.

Well done!  You are now a proud owner of your very own domain name!

Each platform offers two different options to use their software. You can host it on your own domain or you can get a free blog and they will host it. The quickest and easiest option is obviously to get a free blog that is hosted by them. However, I HIGHLY recommend that you host it on your own domain. Here are a few good reasons for that:

1. You have complete control over your blog. No one can suspend your account etc. It’s your blog, you’re just using their software!
2. If you ever decide to sell your blog, you’re out of luck if you’re not hosting it on your own domain … you don’t own it so you can’t sell it!
3. Are people really going to take you serious if you’re using a free blog that you’re not even hosting yourself? You may lose credibility, as many people may think you’re not serious enough about your own blog.
4. Free blogging platforms restrict you from accessing files like the .htaccess file, which is a very important file to control when your blog becomes popular!

If you’re going to make a serious effort at this, you should pay £30 or so each year for your own domain.  This is easy to do and I will guide you through the process step by step.

Out of these three platforms WordPress wins the quality race hands down.  The reason WordPress is so incredibly popular and effective is because it allows you to easily install plugins. There are LOADS of plugins that will do just about anything you want and most of them are free.

Here are some reasons why I think WordPress is better than the rest:

It’s Free (always good).

It’s massive – WordPress has a huge community behind it that produces free themes (front end part of you website that everyone can see) and plugins (small programs that carry out a specific function like a secure contact box, or an affiliate link to amazon) that make your website fantastic.

It’s user friendly – if you have some familiarity with computers you should have little problem building a website that looks great and that ranks well on the Google search engine.

It looks great!  WordPress has loads of themes that stand out from the crowd.  You also have many options on some themes to customise your site to get it looking how you want it to.  The theme I use for all my websites including this one is a paid theme called Catalyst.  I recommend it to you wholeheartedly because it will give you total flexibility and freedom in the design of your website without having to learn any programming languages.  Go to the Catalyst website by clicking on this link.

We have pretty much established you need to be using WordPress (.org) for your website.  In a alter post I will explain how to install this onto your server.  The next step for you is to choose and buy a domain name.  Read my next post to find out all about this